The Gatekeeper Why is it so hard to see the truth about ourselves?

Our desires and fears color everything we think and see. We’re not completely objective about anything.

But, it’s easier to look at someone else’s situation and see it more clearly, more truly.

Do you ever find [...]]]>

The Gatekeeper
Why is it so hard to see the truth about ourselves?

Our desires and fears color everything we think and see.
We’re not completely objective about anything.

But, it’s easier to look at someone else’s situation and see it more clearly, more truly.

Do you ever find yourself going in circles, unable to decide, unable to take action?
You feel the urge to move in some positive direction, and at the same time, you feel compelled to stay where you are, or move in some trivial way that is no movement at all.

Sometimes, we’re aware of being stuck, and it pains us.
Other times, we just dismiss it as no big deal.

Yet, when we look at others who are stuck like this, we can’t understand what’s wrong with them.

We often say to others the equivalent of “just do it.”
Personal Development seems easy from the outside, looking in.

Maybe you know people who are addicts, or who have some compulsive behavior, or phobias.

And you, who don’t suffer from their addiction or behavior, just can’t understand why they do what they do.

It seems like there’s an invisible force that pushes them in the wrong direction, or a barrier that stops them from moving in the right direction.

Much of the time, outside advice is no more powerful than the voice in you that tells you to move.
And you remain stuck.

We could speak of the power of habits.
When we’ve developed a habit, our mind works to maintain it and protect it.
We act in a certain way without thinking.

But that’s not the whole story.
There are many habits that you can break with attention and persistence.

While other behaviors haunt you.
As though there were someone inside you that won’t let you pass through a gate that leads to another life.

It’s as though there’s a jailer, or gatekeeper who guards you, and won’t let you out.

The Enemy Within?

This force within us that won’t let us move and change, seems like an enemy.

It sabotages our success, our growth, our relationships.
It keeps us stuck in a life that we want to transform.

We feel trapped, imprisoned.
Sometimes we feel as though we’re stuck in someone else’s life, while our true life is waiting for us beyond that invisible gate.

Will we ever pass through the gate to the life we ache for?

As long as we think that the Gatekeeper is our enemy, the more he will block our path.

Surprisingly, the Gatekeeper is not your enemy.
He’s here to protect you.
He’s the parent, the one who says “no.”

The gatekeeper is the one who treats you like a child, and thinks that you can only be safe if he holds you by the hand.

Think back to your time as a child.
Most parents try to protect their children from real, or imagined dangers.

Parents tell us where to go and what to do, and they tell us to stop.
Is there any word more associated with parenting than No?

Most of us move beyond taking orders from our parents at some point in our lives.
But we’ve internalized the idea that protecting ourselves from danger means acting like a parent.

That means standing at the door and saying no.

Who Stands Watch Over Your Life and Keeps You Safe?

We need a new way of looking at safety, and protecting ourselves.

We can’t just dismiss this part of ourselves that wants to keep us safe.
We have an innate, fundamental desire to be safe.

But we can replace our inner parent with a different kind of guardian.

We can appoint a trusted adviser, someone level-headed who will suggest which actions are more risky and less risky.

When you work with an adviser, you take responsibility for your own safety, and you accept that every action has risk.

And you are responsible to make the final decision.

Being a child often means not deciding for yourself.
It means letting someone else take responsibility for what happens.

Are we ready to stop being helpless children, who can always blame someone else for whatever goes wrong?
Are you tired of acting like a spoiled child, who wants his own way, but won’t accept any responsibility?

Are you ready to protect yourself?

I’m not suggesting that people with serious phobias or compulsive behavior can erase all their problems with a simple change in attitude.

But that change in attitude makes an extraordinary difference for everyone.

And for many of us, this change in attitude, changes everything.

Living Dreams I love imagination, passion, and possibility.

Weave them together with a sprinkling of hope. Dreams of a bright future will fill your heart and mind.

And dreams are the fuel that drives personal growth.

Do you think that you’re too old to dream? Many people assume that [...]]]>

Living Dreams
I love imagination, passion, and possibility.

Weave them together with a sprinkling of hope.
Dreams of a bright future will fill your heart and mind.

And dreams are the fuel that drives personal growth.

Do you think that you’re too old to dream?
Many people assume that only the young can dream.

Everyone has moments when they are filled with passionate dreams of the future.

For some of us those dreams flash and disappear, and are gone.

For others, the dreams are like the moon.
The dreams grow stronger, weaken, and then return.

Sometimes those dreams are sharp and alive.
They seem to surround us, and call to us.

At other times, those dreams are lost, buried, forgotten, or hidden.

Safety and Adventure
We have contradictory elements within us.

One side of us looks for the familiar.
It looks for familiar patterns among the world that greets our senses.

We want to connect today’s world to yesterday’s world.
We want to predict and control what happens to us.

This side of us makes us feel safe.

Another side of us swims in a sea of possibility.
We hunt for new patterns to taste, and explore.

We want to expand our world, and make it larger and larger.
This is the heart of all desire for freedom.

This side of us loves adventure.

It loves dreams, and lives on dreams.
This side of us makes us feel alive.

Perhaps the years you’ve lived have weighed you down, and clouded your dreams.

But are your dreams really gone?
No.

You can’t live without dreams, any more than you can live without air.
And, if you’re only safe, you can never be free.

Getting Stuck
When our pain and fears and habits stand in the way of our dreams, we get stuck.

Most of us are stuck in one or many areas of our lives.
We have goals or dreams, but we can’t seem to make any progress toward them.

When we can’t connect with those dreams, they become another reminder that we’re trapped, and the dreams lose their magic.

There are many ways to describe the feeling of being stuck:

• resistance
• trapped
• enslaved
• running in circles
• life on hold
• powerless
• lifeless
• small
• old

It’s easy, and natural to think of yourself and your life as something small.

Focus on the physical world that surrounds you.

You’ll see a world of objects.
Objects fill a small place in space, and have a limited, predictable use.

It’s easy to look at your body as just another object.

And you assume that your mind and heart and future must be similarly bound and limited.

This way of viewing the world comes from that part of us that wants the world to be small and predictable and safe.

But there’s a price to be paid, when the drive for safety buries the dreams of the explorer.

The life drains away from the familiar, until it seems old and small and empty of life.

One of the reasons why we get caught up in looking for only safety is that we come to feel overwhelmed by change.

It’s frightening when everything seems new.

You’re overwhelmed by the endless possibility and you don’t know what to do with it all.

You shut down, and look for a safe, familiar little corner to hide out in.

Safe Abundance
For most of us, our drive for safety has suppressed the drive for possibility.
We need to strike a balance between safety and possibility.

Let’s try to reconnect with the explorer who is hunting for possibility.

There’s another word that carries us to the world of possibility.
This word is popular in traditional religious works, as well as spiritual and new age works: abundance.

When we think of abundance, we think of rich possibility, but a possibility that is friendly and nurturing – a world of possibility that supports us fully in familiar ways, as well as offering pathways to new worlds.

Let’s look into abundance a little deeper.

Look at how the idea of abundance enriches specific areas of our lives.

These pathways and directions add some structure to the possibility, and make it much less overwhelming.

Let’s open ourselves to abundance in the following areas of our lives:

• abundant vision of self
• abundant learning, knowledge, and skills
• abundant attitudes
• abundant choices
• abundant action
• abundant relationships
• abundant tools, objects, and space
• abundant time, with abundant opportunity for growth & change

In later posts, we’ll explore each of these in detail.

Do you remember as a child, when the world seemed endless, and every stone was full of possibility? And whatever we knew of the world, was only a beginning — a glimpse of endless knowledge that we could only dream of.

What happened to that world? It seems so [...]]]> Trapped In A World of Pain

Do you remember as a child, when the world seemed endless, and every stone was full of possibility?
And whatever we knew of the world, was only a beginning — a glimpse of endless knowledge that we could only dream of.

What happened to that world?
It seems so far away.

Do you feel that some or all of the possibility of youth is gone?
Has your inner world become full of pain?
Has it grown small, hard, and closed?

Do you feel at the mercy of a hundred little forces that move you to act in ways that you’re not proud of?

You’re not alone.

Injury and Healing
When an area of the body is injured, it often swells to contain that damage, and accelerate healing. That swelling is a temporary protection.

If an area of skin is irritated, again and again, it can’t heal. Instead, the body builds up thick skin, a callus, in that place. The callus is stronger than regular skin, but much less sensitive. The body gives up the sensitivity, in exchange for strength.

Something similar happens with our emotions.
We suffer emotional injury.
But sadly, we’re not very good at healing emotional pain.
Many of our emotional injuries remain open wounds.

We continue to encounter situations, people, and challenges that strike at our emotional injuries, and revive or increase the pain.

Often the strongest pain comes when we face our own failures, contradictions, hypocrisy, and lies.

Unable to heal our pain, we try to hide from it.

We hide from the things that expose, and deepen our pain.
And from situations that remind us of parts of ourselves that we would like to forget.

We develop a network of mental and emotional habits which form an armor or thick skin to protect an ever-growing collection of sensitive spots.

We become harder, colder, and less sensitive.
We become less thoughtful about who we are, what is possible for us, and how we are ignoring that possibility.

As we stagger under the weight of our emotional pain, it seems sensible to build up armor against the world’s dangers, and against pain. Through the cloud of our pain, the world’s extraordinary possibility seems distant. We are ready to abandon that possibility to escape our pain.

But our armor fails us, falls away, and our sensitive spots are exposed.
We are haunted, by our contradictions and lies, and the extraordinary possibility within us.

The thicker the armor, the more we hurt when the weak spot is irritated. It feels to us like someone stuck a needle in an infected wound.

Is it any surprise, as we strike out to protect ourselves, that our emotional reactions are wild, negative, and cruel?

Beyond Pain and Comfort

As a machine is used, it inevitably collects dirt and grime.
As we grow old, arteries get clogged, and organs weaken.

And as we age, we collect limiting and destructive habits and beliefs and fears.

Someday science will learn to clean and rejuvenate our bodies. Until then, physical decay is inevitable.

But even today, the common personal decay within us that crushes possibility is not inevitable.
This decay of the spirit can be stopped, and even reversed.

But, not through hiding from the pain, and pretending that it doesn’t exist.

When we feel emotional pain, we often seek comfort.
Sometimes that comfort is the comfort of sleep — erasing every pain, and every challenge.

At other times, we are prepared to live with our pain.
But we look for another sort of comfort. We want to find meaning in that pain, or at least meaning somewhere else in our lives.

We look for meaning through relationships, children, success, community, religion, spirituality, etc.

I have to find something outside of me that seems more important than I am.
I need to find a big something that I can call myself a part of.
If I can find that meaning, then all of the pain might be worth it.

Forever Young

The search for meaning is a wonderful quest.

But is there meaning only outside me?
Where is the meaning within me?

I believe that our greatest opportunity to live a meaningful life is born when we choose possibility over pain.

The love of possibility overpowers the escape from pain.
This is the road to personal development.

Can we love the truth again?
Can we find the courage to accept what we have done with our lives so far?

Can we release an inexhaustible thirst to see where we are, and accept our pain?

When we find that thirst, the little habits of mind and heart that bind us, lose most of their power.

Opening our eyes means that we will be confronted with our personal history.
At first this is troubling, as the pain of our history seems to overshadow everything else.

We need to see clearly where we have been, so we can see where we are.

And seeing our history clearly is only a small part of what we want from clear vision.

I want to look to a place that now seems far away, at the edge of a strange world.
I want to look for the full measure of who I can be.

It may have been a long time since I was willing to see the endless possibility that lies deep within me.

My eyes may have grown weak from living in a place far away from light.
The endless light may seem blinding and frightening.

Whatever I think I am, is only a shadow of what I can be.

My inner self may seem old and weak.
But deep within me, my light and my possibility, and my ability to become someone great is forever young.

That possibility will not be denied forever.

Unfortunately the idea of the enemy is nothing new for us. It was 60 years between the attack [...]]]> Do You Have Enemies?
In the wake of 9/11, the conversations of our leaders, our media, as well as our own private conversations, have become filled with the idea of the enemy, and often the word itself.

Unfortunately the idea of the enemy is nothing new for us.
It was 60 years between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the domestic terrorist attack of 9/11, but the time in between was not empty of war.

The United States has been in many wars throughout the years, large and small.
If war is a regular visitor to the United States, it is a resident in some countries.

The world remains full of war.
And there are no wars without enemies.

There are times when there are others who want to destroy us, others who seem deserving of the name enemy.
At other times, those who we do not understand, or who oppose us, are too readily called enemy.

Sometimes we make enemies of those who have different beliefs, languages, or skin color. In recent times, the bitterness that often colors the conversations between Democrats and Republicans has become a conversation of enemies, rather than a discussion of ideas.

It doesn’t matter what my politics are, or what your politics are.
Let’s both resist the urge to mindlessly support our own side, and say that it’s the fault of one side or the other.
Both sides are equally at fault.

There is an overwhelming bitterness that colors many discussions, on both sides of the aisle. It’s like an ancient feud between two families that is just waiting to break out into open war.

Each side just waits for an opportunity to attack the other side.

I’m sick of it, and I hope that you are too.
If enough of us refuse to support this politics of enemies, there is hope that we can get our leaders to change.

If our politicians put that energy into real work, it would be a different world.

Public and Private Enemies
As our involvement in wars rises and falls, the idea of public enemies comes in and out of our conversations. These are countries or ideologies that are said to threaten our country, way of life, etc.

And public enemies are not the only kind of enemy.

Each of us have private enemies.
Sure, we’re uncomfortable with using that word, but we think of them as enemies nonetheless.

For some of us, our enemies are those who have inflicted us with great physical or emotional pain.

When we start thinking about the enemy, hate follows along like a shadow, poisons us, and makes life bitter.

Maybe there is some purpose in forever holding hate in our hearts, directed at those who have nearly destroyed us.
But I don’t think so.

Hate does not empower us to protect what is precious in our lives from those who truly threaten us. It makes us stupid, and it darkens our hearts.

And, while there are people who truly threaten and harm us, privately, or as a country, there are many other people who we only pretend are enemies.

Enemies and Blame
We’re introduced to the idea of blame at a young age, and it’s reinforced as we grow.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as flawed, and full of conflict.
We don’t like to admit that we’ve made many mistakes.

And sometimes it’s even simpler than that.
We face a challenge, and we find that we don’t know what to do.

We don’t like to admit that we’re fallible, and imperfect, and sometimes clueless.

We don’t want to feel embarrassed.
We don’t want to return to that feeling of being a little child, with a world that’s too big for us to handle.

Rather than face our discomfort, and work hard to find a solution, we settle for an easy way out:
It’s his fault.
It’s her fault.
It’s their fault.

We pretend that the only reason that we have a problem is because of what someone else has done wrong.

We sidestep the truth.
We take a real challenge that we could work hard and grow from, and turn it into blame.

We don’t have challenges.
No, we have problems.
And those problems are someone else’s fault.

What is the truth when we find some difficulty in the midst of two sides that blame each other? Most likely, both sides have some share in causing that difficulty, and both sides probably have a role to play in finding a solution.

Enemies and Marketing
In Do You Hate Selling, I speak of Blair Warren’s One Sentence Persuasion, and five powerful ways that can be used or abused to influence people.

People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies.

In other posts I’ve discussed the first four methods of persuasion (see links to these articles below).

The last method is help them throw rocks at their enemies.

Politicians, and people at every level of society, often slip into the easy way of enemies and blame.
Find, or manufacture an enemy that you can share with those that you wish to influence, and attack that enemy together.

It’s frightening how effective this is.
And it’s so sad to see how hard it is for many of us to build ourselves up, without tearing other people down.

When marketers use this idea to influence or manipulate their customers, they don’t typically demonize groups of people.

Instead they talk about the forces or limitations that get in our way and stop us from getting what we want.

And they promise to help us attack those obstacles.

Of course, they want to sell us the perfect product.

Some products are wonderful, and can truly help us.
And marketers rightfully speak of common difficulties/enemies that we share.

Other products are useless, and the marketers are only manipulating us.

We’re used to thinking of unscrupulous salesmen as the most manipulative people on earth, but even the worst salesmen don’t spend their time teaching us to hate.

Like you, I don’t have all the answers. I’m so full of questions.

And when I’m honest with myself, my questions burst forth, and haunt me. And one question comes back, again and again, in many forms.

Money. Why do we love it, and hate it? How did we get so messed up about money?

Money does seem to be at the root of many problems.

Certain objects seem more wondrous than others, and show up frequently in stories about magical worlds.

Take mirrors, for example. It’s strange to see yourself from the outside in. One of the reasons that it [...]]]> Mirrors
To me, the world is a magical place, full of wonder.
It’s not a belief, exactly.
It’s a feeling.

Certain objects seem more wondrous than others, and show up frequently in stories about magical worlds.

Take mirrors, for example.
It’s strange to see yourself from the outside in.
One of the reasons that it seems so strange to look at yourself in a mirror is that the mirror seems to capture you.
It seems to confine you to a tiny spot in time and space.
But inside, you still feel open and limitless, like a great ocean.

There are countless mirrors in my life, although they are not made of glass and wood and metal.
And these mirrors reflect what lies deep within me, not merely my skin and clothing.

Every experience, every possession, every person we meet shows us what lies inside of you and me.

Do you know what moves you?
Do you know what scares you, angers you, bores you, excites you?

Each us have some answers to these questions, with a mixture of truth and lies.
The way we act, and react to life’s challenges, and the way we deal with life’s quiet moments, provide a more complete answer to these questions.

As I’ve said in previous posts, our inner world is full of contradiction – conflicting desires and little “me”s, and competing stories that color everything we see.

It’s no surprise then, that the way we act is full of contradictions.
And, it’s no surprise that our experience of the world is full of contradictions.
Much of the time, our relationships with the people around us, exhibit the disorder that lies within us, that we pretend not to see.

We strike out at the mirror, not realizing that we are facing our own reflection.
If we are at war with ourselves, we will be at war with others, finding threats and danger in the world around us.

Dangers, Threats, and Challenges
I’m a typical parent. I have a strong desire to protect my children from danger.

But where are the dangers in life?
Which are real, and which are wildly exaggerated, or totally made up?

Most parents, intentionally or not, teach their children that the world is a dangerous place

• weather
• sickness
• strangers
• accidents

Fortunately, children are natural risk takers and this helps to counter the constant stream of warnings.

But only for a while.
Eventually we grow up, and many of us internalize this story of the world as a dangerous enemy.

The source of this is not simply in our thoughts and feelings.
It starts much deeper in the parts of the brain that we share with other Mammals.
Mammals have 3 hard-wired responses to danger:

• Fight: eliminate the danger
• Flight: avoid the danger
• Freeze: pretend to be dead, slow down the body to dull our experience of the pain and trauma (if we’re attacked), and flee/attack if we find a last minute chance to do so. If an animal survives such a situation, the animal has a way of releasing the experience. Unfortunately in human beings, being helpless, traumatized, frozen is not readily released when the experience is over.

(The freeze response is well documented, and has profound consequences for people who have suffered traumatic experiences. Yet, it’s unfamiliar to most people. I’ve discussed it in more detail in Getting Unstuck: Fear on Ice.)

The three responses are animal responses to real, physical danger.

Inner and Outer Dangers
What happens when we see psychological challenges, and verbal disagreements as dangers?

There are 3 common responses.

• Attack (fight): eliminate the danger
• Avoid (flight): avoid the danger
• Accommodate (give-in, give-up, ambush): we may give in to the source of the danger completely, or it may be a temporary strategy (like playing dead) which may followed by a later attack or escape from the situation

These responses are a natural consequence of the initial perception of a challenge or disagreement as a danger.

How have so many of us come to a point where every disagreement or challenge becomes a danger?

Many people have a long history of feeling unfulfilled and empty, of being disconnected from their own unique greatness, of being mentally and emotionally imprisoned in the beliefs and demands of others. We carry this burden around with us, buried beneath the surface. It takes only a small opening to release the hidden, explosive force.

For some people, sadly, just speaking to strangers can be a difficult and unpleasant experience, as every stranger becomes a danger.

A Fourth Response

If your challenges to me, and our disagreements are not a threat, what are they?

Challenges are an opportunity to change and grow.
Do you ever seek the quiet of comfortable and predictable situations and people, even though it’s a form of “sleep”?

Challenges wake us up, and give us the opportunity to rethink our priorities, and listen to our dreams. (Strange dreams, indeed, that we can only see after we awaken a little)

Challenges give us the opportunity to look at things in a new way, and create a new, more powerful way of understanding the world. We become able to see a new world of possibility, looking through the eyes of another person.

Challenges give us a moment where we can step out of the stories that we’re telling about our life, and rewrite our stories.

Sometimes challenges offer us a different opportunity.
A chance to reaffirm what is deeply important to us and say “No.”

See Power of a Positive No, by William Ury for an excellent discussion of the three responses, and an alternative which he refers to as the Positive No.

It’s strange.
Sometimes we fight with other people over nothing.
Other times, we give in, even though we betray our sense of what’s important.

It’s possible to disagree with others without attacking them.
And, it’s possible to agree with others without abandoning what is truly important to me.

A Positive No does not attack or avoid the perspective and humanity of the other person. It is a No which respects the other person, explains why my position is critical to me, and tries to find common ground which respects what is most important to each of us. And where no solution can be found, the Positive No remains a clear, solid, respectful No.

Where did these contradictory, and often limiting beliefs come [...]]]> The Meaning of Stories and Lies
In Part 1, At War With Myself, we heard that a person pretends to be of one mind and one heart, while the truth is that each of us is full of contradictions. We’re full of warring personalities and beliefs.

Where did these contradictory, and often limiting beliefs come from?
They came from our parents, friends, teachers, and others within our society.

However, people didn’t make up these beliefs and stories in a creative writing class!
Every belief, however misguided, serves some kind of purpose. The beliefs that we were taught were an attempt to make sense out of a life which is usually complex, and often overwhelming and unfathomable. The stories are used to feel safe, important, loved, and in control.

We’re all trying to make sense out of life, to find the meaning in it, and to look for a direction to go in.

We’re taught stories, or we make them up, to serve some part of ourselves. If my beliefs are full of lies and contradictions, my stories will explain my life in twisted ways. Ways that alter my perception of external reality to fit my pre-existing beliefs.

Learning from the Movies
Have you ever seen a movie, or read a book?

Sometimes these stories have a deep effect on us. Still, when the story ends, or shortly afterwards, the story is gone. It loses its hold on us, and we can replace it with another.

The stories that we tell about ourselves, our lives, and other people aren’t much different.

They’re just stories. If you see that a story takes away your power, is destructive and full of lies, let it go.

As we travel through life, we collect stories, and over time, this collection of stories is an incredible burden.

We can just let go of our burden, setting it down like a bag of heavy stones, and start to walk light and free.

What’s His Story?
Did you ever hear someone use this expression, or use it yourself?
Sometimes this expression is a way of asking “what’s up with him?” Why is he feeling or acting a certain way? What’s behind it?
Sometimes the question goes deeper. We’re looking to understand what that person is all about. What makes him tick? What drives him?

A story can be much more than a collection of facts or events.
A story is a way of connecting facts, events, and lives that explains those details, and brings out the meaning in those details:

• What are the passions?
• What are the goals?
• What are the challenges?
• What do the people in the story believe?
• Are the beliefs true or false?
• Do those beliefs enrich the lives of the people, or are they a burden
• Do your beliefs create more possibility in your life, or do they make your world smaller?

Do you tell yourself such rich stories, that ask and answer such questions? Can you build a stage in your mind and heart where such stories can be told?

You have the power to fill yourself with powerful stories that are chapters of one great, consistent story: the story of what’s truly important to you, and the greatness that you can reveal in yourself.

Childhood Stories
The first stories that we’re taught come from our parents.
These are stories that are very popular and yet extraordinarily destructive:

• The world is dangerous
• If something is unknown or unfamiliar it must be dangerous
• Profound personal change is nearly impossible
• You are powerless
• You are a victim
• Other people and external events are at fault when you fail. You must blame them to feel safe.
• If you can’t find anyone directly to blame, start blaming people who are living the life that you desire.
• If all else fails, start blaming parts of yourself: your beliefs, physical desires, emotions, etc.

Are you confused? I seem to be questioning some of your beliefs, yet it sounds like I’m saying that you shouldn’t blame your own beliefs.

There’s a difference between understanding the forces at work within you, or outside of you, and blaming them.
Blame says:

• “I can’t”
• “I’m not responsible”

The Power of Living without Blame
Do you want to change a belief that doesn’t serve you?

The first step is to just see it for what it is without blame.
Why is this so important?

Blame turns my powerful desire to reveal my greatness and create my future, into an obsession with the past and the present. Blame transforms the energy of this desire for the future, into negative, destructive emotions towards others, or negative emotions towards some part of myself. Those emotions bleed away the power of what I’ve seen and understood about my present and future.

Robert Fritz discusses a similar idea in several of his books, including Creating. Fritz writes of a power that fuels all artistic creation, and all great achievement.

What is that power?
It comes from living with the contrast or tension between current reality and the future that we want to create. This is not “I hate the present, or I hate myself, so I want to escape to the future”. It is staying focused on the future that I desire, and keeping my present situation calmly in focus so I can see clearly what I have to do to create the future.

See and feel at full strength what your life is like now, with your potential obscured by lies and stories, and what’s possible for you.

See this and you have the power to change. There will still be obstacles, but this is the beginning of your future.

Not on some distant battlefield, halfway around the world. Here, in my heart.

I don’t always notice the battle. Sometimes I don’t even feel it.

Maybe I notice a brief inner struggle while reaching for a piece of cake. Part of me wants the pleasure, while another [...]]]> The Battle Rages
I’m at war, right now.

Not on some distant battlefield, halfway around the world.
Here, in my heart.

I don’t always notice the battle.
Sometimes I don’t even feel it.

Maybe I notice a brief inner struggle while reaching for a piece of cake.
Part of me wants the pleasure, while another part of me says that it’s not good for me.

It’s like I have soldiers of different armies, with opposing goals, fighting it out within me.

Then there are the personality/emotional wars.
There’s one part of me that’s calm, thoughtful of what others need, and focused on what’s truly important in life.

Then there’s another part of me.
He’s unhappy, angry, better than everyone else.

The Many
There are too many “I”s within me to count. The physical drives within me have certain priorities. My various emotions, dreams, and thoughts have many other priorities, and push me in a wide range of directions.

Many of the personalities or character “traits” within me directly oppose some of the others.
When I’m acting tough or self-absorbed I may have disdain for the compassionate one, and when I’m in the grip of the loving personality, I may find the hateful part of myself unbearable.

There are different emotions appropriatein different situations. There are distinct situations where love, joy, hope, even anger could each be appropriate. We don’t act and feel the same way at all times. That’s not the problem.

But we often act, or feel in contradictory ways in a single situation.
And I feel for a moment that I’m lying to myself, that I’m betraying my sense of what I know is right.

The strangest thing about this collection of contradictions is that I have one name, and that I pretend to be one consistent personality.

It’s like someone started 100 songs playing at once.
Would the listener hear any of them clearly?

Built for Possibility
Why don’t we notice the contradictions and hypocrisy of our actions more clearly?
Why doesn’t this situation drive us mad, or motivate us to change?

Here’s one way to look at it:
You’re built to handle the contradictions. Your mind is capable of considering dramatically different approaches to life. Your mind is a great simulator, able to consider a dozen or a thousand approaches to a situation, and life in general.

Each program, each goal, each simulation can be set up in isolation so that we can learn from the unique insights of a particular approach, and different situations may require different behavior.

What’s the problem, then?

Let’s say that you want to send a package from New York to Chicago, an 18 hour drive.
You appoint a driver who starts to travel along a direct route for a couple of hours.

Then that driver gets tired, or hungry, or bored. He stops at a truck stop, and tosses the package at random to another driver who is sitting there. Maybe that person is going to Chicago and maybe not. The first driver may not even tell the second where the package is going. Who know where the package will end up?

There’s extraordinary possibility present in each of us. We can barely imagine the places we can go and the things that we can accomplish if we would focus on passionate goals and keep moving steadily in the direction of those goals.

Instead, we’ve taken the incredible flexibility that our mind possesses, and used it to build an inner world of warring personalities who keep switching goals, switching direction, and accomplishing relatively little.

It’s one thing to simulate different, contradictory approaches to life. It’s something entirely different to try to live multiple, contradictory lives at the same time, in one body.

When the multiple personalities in an individual consider themselves completely different, don’t pretend to be a single person, and often have different memories we call that Schizophrenia.

The difference for most of us is that our warring personalities pretend to be a single person, and don’t view themselves so distinctly. And we share all our memories.

How did we get here?
We didn’t decide to do this consciously, of course.

We’re not born knowing what to do.
We learn. We grow.

And I inevitably have goals for myself that reach far beyond who I am now.
So I have to be able to live with who I am now as I keep moving forward.

My goals don’t make the present me blameworthy or bad.

The difference between now and my future isn’t a contradiction.
It’s a gap. It’s a force that pulls me forward toward the future.

The power of that difference to move me depends on me feeling the gap.
If I pretend that there’s no gap, there’s nowhere to go.

I’ll Pretend. You pretend.
When we were children, our parents and the world around us was full of contradictions.
We were taught to believe in stories that are full of contradictions:

• You’re told that you “can’t”. You’re told that you’re not capable of doing certain things, just because your parents or your society think it’s too hard.
• You have to pretend that everything’s fine when it’s not
• You have to pretend to be in control. Pretend that you have a way to deal with everything: give in, attack, avoid
• No one’s perfect, but it’s bad to make mistakes
• When you feel that something’s not right, look for someone to blame instead of accepting responsibility to do what’s in your power to do

What happened when we were forced to pretend that lies were true?
We learned how to justify ourselves. We learned how to explain away the contradictions and to bury the feelings that arose from contradiction.

Hope
Contradictory behavior is so common around us that we’ve come to expect it.
In contrast, people we meet who have clear, powerful goals and act consistently with their goals astound us.

These are the people of great personal power in this world.
You and I can cast off our old stories and find that power for ourselves.

(Read Inner Contradictions, Part 2: The Story of You)